At this writing, the jury is out in the perjury and obstruction of justice trial of I. Lewis Libby, former chief of staff for Vice President Cheney. When I left the courthouse this afternoon, Judge Reggie Walton was attending a memorial service, with the jury still deliberating for the second day.

I can make no prediction as to the trial outcome. However, in the interim some media outlets are pushing or falling into an insidious line that the Libby case is either too difficult and obscure to understand, or too trivial to bother with. Setting aside the allegations against Libby individually, this line is dangerous, partly because it is so blatantly the reverse of accurate. The CIA leak matter itself is actually very simple.

What the Libby case is about...

It’s simple: a bunch of very high-level people, at the policy-making level in the White House and the Office of the Vice President (OVP), set out to discredit and to oust Joe Wilson and more importantly, Mrs. Wilson, after Wilson published his July 6, 2003, op-ed article titled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.”*

The maneuver was simple, merely using the bully pulpits of White House and Office of the Vice President to circulate numerous times within a month – to the press --- the item of information that Joe Wilson had been 'sent' to Niger to check out the purported Iraq-uranium deal by his wife, Valerie Plame, a WMD analyst in the Counter-proliferation Division of the CIA, where the overwhelming majority of analysts were covert. The line taken by Cheney's office was that Wilson was claiming falsely to have been 'sent' by the Vice President, when it was really his wife.

The administration action was concerted. From June 13, 2003, to July 12, 2003, testimony and documents in the Libby trial corroborate that at a minimum, this item was given to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward by then Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, who also gave it to columnist Robert Novak; it was conveyed by Libby himself to departing White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who also heard it, according to his grand jury testimony, from White House staffer Dan Bartlett; Fleischer in turn gave it to a couple of other reporters including NBC’s David Gregory, who did not publish it; Libby also divulged it in an exclusive to then New York Times reporter Judith Miller; White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove also confirmed the item for Bob Novak – who published it in a column on July 14, 2003 – and gave it to Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper; and WashPost reporter Walter Pincus also received it. Other press contacts or attempted contacts in the same period included NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and Chris Matthews, who told Wilson that Rove had called Mrs. Wilson “fair game,” and Glenn Kessler at the WashPost.

In fact, the White House-OVP action was so concerted, firing-squad style, that in retrospect it becomes a sort of reverse lottery, an inverse Russian roulette; even in hindsight it becomes difficult to determine who fired figuratively the first shot or the fatal bullet.

Well, they organize firing squads this way for a reason. Same principle here: this was --- or was intended to be --- a PR hit, a PR firing squad, a PR lethal discrediting, with the toxic bolt of publicity directed at least against both the secret position held by Valerie Plame Wilson and the public role taken by Joe Wilson. As with the other kind of execution, more than one "senior official" was deputized to perform the action demanded by a higher office.

Think Ides of March for Julius Caesar, or the firing-squad scene in Rossellini’s Open City. This was a group assassination – marshaled ad hoc by an entrenched faction in the administration – performed for a reason, namely to prevent any further exposure of the pretexts behind which the administration went to war.

So, given the success of the obfuscation, the only thing the forces of law and order can do is to prosecute the open and apparent acts. “What’s open made to justice, that justice seizes” (Measure for Measure --- Shakespeare). You don’t get out of a speeding ticket just because other drivers are speeding away behind the back of the cop who’s writing your ticket. (Predictably, the putative law-and-order types among the neocons are saying you can, calling the prosecution “guilt by association” when they’re not representing the entire matter as either trivial or hopelessly confusing.)

That said, the Libby trial or Libby’s alleged actions are hardly the whole story. – No one is going to claim seriously that Libby went out on a limb to implement a series of press contacts that were strictly his own idea – holding his hand over a candle flame to demonstrate his toughness under interrogation – G. Gordon Libby. The higher office was that of the Vice President, and there is no reason to assume that any actions taken by the OVP were taken unawares of the White House.

[*Wilson’s timing, or that of the New York Times which published the piece, was probably an added irritant since that was the week that the president, with an entourage including then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, went to Africa.]

this really helped me sort out the issue at hand. i had heard of the Libby trial and read/seen numerous reports about it without actually knowing why Libby was on trial. it's a shame that the real culprit, ie whomever arranged this character assasination of the Wilsons, and also the OVP, since they were clearly aware of this libel conspiracy, cannot be held accountable.
thanks for the clarity.

One thing I'm not quite clear on: some people say that Valerie Wilson was not covert, and therefore no crime was committed by outing her. But who requested the investigation to begin with? Wasn't it the CIA, and didn't they ask for the investigation because a covert operative (Valerie Wilson) had been outed? I haven't been able to find anything that completely puts this issue to rest. Does anyone know exactly how & why this investigation started?

If Valerie had been an overt employee or a covert employee who had been sitting quietly at a desk, never venturing overseas, the CIA would not have sent the Department of Justice a letter on 30 July 2003 stating:

the CIA reported to the Criminal Division of DoJ a possible violation of criminal law concerning the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

The CIA knew that Valerie was a covert agent. But they did not know if the Novak leak was an intentional disclosure. That was for the FBI to determine.

Fitzgerald seems to want the jury to convict Libby. If they do, does that mean that since Libby seems to have a number one priority of protecting Cheney, we're looking at a Gordon Liddy type outcome, where a "loyal to the end" guy goes to jail and the President, (in this case the VP), gets away with a nice retirement?

Does Liddy Libby get a radio show that never goes off the air and a freedom of speech award when he gets out?

Was channel surfing and happened to stop on Imus for a minute. Big mistake. Some 'expert' was saying that Libby will probably get a few months suspended sentence --- it wasn't that important of a crime. Of course I turned it right off again before I choked.

Can't understand why MSNBC still has so many idiots.

But I love Keith! Did anyone catch his piece on last night about the jury deliberations. Title I thought was quite clever:

Brad - Thanks for the clarification. Also, do we know if Fitzgerald's job is finished at the end of this Libby case? He hasn't brought a case against the source of the leak yet, and that's what he was originally asked to do.

Countdown is a great show but I think he would do a lot better with the format of Hardball where no time is wasted on celebrity fluff. I'm sure they're trying to pull in a bigger audience, but it's a waste of important time. I like the way he has all the important stuff first.

I wonder if that new contract that he just signed gets him out of the 'celebrity' crap. I don't mind if he does a celeb story once in a while, but the daily updates on valley girls is really infantile and cheapens the show.

As for Hardball, I can't stand watching Chris Matthews because I'm always waiting for the next lie or spin to completely distort reality.

From the beginning I thought that this was done to intimidate the CIA and to get them to send the Bushies the info the Bushies wanted. It seemed too petty, chauvinistic, and frankly ineffective, even for Bush-Cheney, to try to paint Wilson as a "girly-man." I've seen nothing even close to my theory, however, until this blog. Remember, it was the CIA who initially brought the law suit, saying that it was a treason to out an undercover agent in time of war.

Tangentally, it's interesting no one has asked WHY the fake note that started all this malarkey was created in the first place.

SOMEWHERE early on I read that the note was actually done BY the CIA. Cheney was hammering them so hard to fake evidence that they did it as an internal joke. They deliberately made it as bad a forgery as possible so that it would never be taken seriously. Yet somehow it got out and Cheney et al glommed onto it.

JOE WILSON: Oh, no, I think it's far more about re-growing the political map of the Middle East.

MOYERS: What does that mean?

WILSON: Well, that basically means trying to install regimes in the Middle East that are far more friendly to the United States - there are those in the administration that call them democracies. Somehow it's hard for me to imagine that a democratic system will emerge out of the ashes of Iraq in the near term. And when and if it does, it's hard for me to believe that it will be more pro-American and more pro-Israeli than what you've got now.

MOYERS: Tell me what you think about the arguments of one of those men, Richard Perle, who is perhaps the most influential advocate in the President's and the administration's ear arguing to get rid of Saddam Hussein. What do you think about his argument?

WILSON: Well, he's certainly the architect of a study that was produced in the mid-'90s for the Likud Israeli government called "a clean break, a new strategy for the realm." And it makes the argument that the best way to secure Israeli security is through the changing of some of these regimes beginning with Iraq and also including Syria. And that's been since expanded to include Iran.

JOE WILSON: Well, the underlying objective, as I see it, the more I look at this, is less and less disarmament, and it really has little to do with terrorism, because everybody knows that a war to invade and conquer and occupy Iraq is going to spawn a new generation of terrorists.

So you look at what's underpinning this, and you go back and you take a look at who's been influencing the process. And it's been those who really believe that our objective must be far grander, and that is to redraw the political map of the Middle East...

Q: In response to the reader who said s/he wasn't trying to be anti-semitic, you said that "his advisors" have argued for years that the way to peace in the Middle East is to crush the Palestinian resistance, etc. Whose advisors and can you elaborate on the history of this argument? It's not something I've heard of before, but then I imagine we don't hear to much about the arguments that go on in our government behind the scenes.

Also, could you tell us a little bit about your company JC Wilson International? Thank you.

Joseph Wilson: We do political risk assessment for companies wanting to do business in Africa Europe and the Middle East.
As to advisers: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol et al. Perle's study group produced a report for Bibi Netnayahu in the mid 90s called "A Clean Break, A New Strategy for the realm." Read also the Project for a "New American Century."
Michael Ledeen from the American Enterprise Institue is another leading figure. He is Mr. Total War. Go to Iran after this.

June 14 03, Joe Wilson -

The real agenda in all of this of course, was to redraw the political map of the Middle East. Now that is code, whether you like it or not, but it is code for putting into place the strategy memorandum that was done by Richard Perle and his study group in the mid-90's which was called, "A Clean Break - A New Strategy for the Realm." And what it is, cut to the quick, is if you take out some of these countries, some of these governments that are antagonistic to Israel then you provide the Israeli government with greater wherewithal to impose its terms and conditions upon the Palestinian people - whatever those terms and conditions might be. In other words, the road to peace in the Middle East goes through Baghdad and Damascus. Maybe Tehran. And maybe Cairo and maybe Tripoli if these guys actually have their way. Rather than going through Jerusalem.

On the other ones, the geopolitical situation, I think there are a number of issues at play; there's a number of competing agendas. One is the remaking of the map of the Middle East for Israeli security, and my fear is that when it becomes increasingly apparent that this was all done to make Sharon's life easier and that American soldiers are dying in order to enable Sharon to impose his terms upon the Palestinians that people will wonder why it is American boys and girls are dying for Israel and that will undercut a strategic relationship and a moral obligation that we've had towards Israel for 55 years. I think it's a terribly flawed strategy.

The administration short-circuited the discussion of whether war was necessary because some of its most powerful members felt it was the best option --- ostensibly because they had deluded themselves into believing that they could easily impose flowering democracies on the region.

A more cynical reading of the agenda of certain Bush advisers could conclude that the Balkanization of Iraq was always an acceptable outcome, because Israel would then find itself surrounded by small Arab countries worried about each other instead of forming a solid block against Israel. After all, Iraq was an artificial country that had always had a troublesome history.

It was not until late in the game that the so-called moral war came into being as a further justification. But the people, the neo-conservatives who brought this war upon us, who were the biggest supporters of this war, did not mention the moral case when they wrote the Project for the New American Century, when they wrote their 1998 letter to then-President Clinton, when Mr. Perle and company wrote their paper for Bibi Netanyahu, called "A Clean Break, a New Strategy for the Security of the Realm," or even when Mr. Wolfowitz drafted his security statement when he was undersecretary for policy in the Bush I White House, Bush I Defense Department.

The neoconservatives who have taken us down this path are actually very few in number. It is a small pack of zealots whose dedication has spanned decades, and that through years of selective recruitment has become a government cult with cells in most of the national security system. Among those cells are the secretive Office of Special Plans in the Department of Defense (reportedly now disbanded) and a similar operation in the State Department that is managed in the office of Under Secretary for Disarmament John Bolton.
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President Bush could fundamentally change the direction of his administration by firing fewer than fifteen senior officials, beginning with those signatories of the Project for the New American Century and those currently holding government posts who signed a 1998 letter that urged President Clinton to wage war on Iraq. They are clustered at the National Security Council, in the Defense and State Departments, and within Vice President Cheney's own parallel national security office. That particular little-known organization --- not accountable to Congress and virtually unknown to the American people --- should be completely dismantled. Never in the history of our democracy has there been established such an influential and pervasive center of power with the ability to circumvent longstanding and accepted reporting structures and to skew decisionmaking practices. It has been described to me chillingly by a former senior government official as a coup d'etat within the State. That's all it would take --- firing fewer than fifteen officials, and the scuttling of Cheney's questionable office --- to alter this administration's radical course.
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The other name that has most often been repeated to me in connection with the inquiry and disclosure into my background and Valerie's is that of Elliott Abrams, who gained infamy in the IranContra scandal during the first Bush administration. ... According to my sources, between March 2003 and the appearance of my article in July, the workup on me that turned up the information on Valerie was shared with Karl Rove, who then circulated it in administration and neoconservative circles.

Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff was so angry about the public statements of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a Bush administration critic married to an undercover CIA officer, that he monitored all of Wilson's television appearances and urged the White House to mount an aggressive public campaign against him, former aides say.

Those efforts by the chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, began shortly after Wilson went public with his criticisms in 2003. But they continued into last year - well after the Justice Department began an investigation in September 2003, into whether administration officials had illegally disclosed the CIA operative's identity, say former White House aides.

While other administration officials were maintaining a careful distance from Wilson in 2004, Libby ordered up a compendium of information that could be used to rebut Wilson's claims that the administration had "twisted" intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq before the U.S. invasion.

Libby pressed the administration to publicly counter Wilson, sparking a debate with other White House officials who thought the tactic would call more attention to the former diplomat and his criticisms. That debate ended after an April 2004 meeting in the office of White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, when staffers were told "don't engage" Wilson, according to notes taken during the meeting by one person present.

"Scooter had a plan to counter Wilson and a passionate desire to do so," said a second person, a former White House official familiar with the internal deliberations.

[NYTimes' Tom] Friedman laughs: I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened.